Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Bradykinectica Moving very slowly. Alternative sense: one who jumps up dynamically to switch off the TV when The Brady Bunch comes on.

Each
Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of
our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter
Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Bradykinectic appears in the Second.

"Sex is our oldest obsession. For as long as
we’ve been doing it, it has been used as a mark of decline and a
measure of progress. It has been at the centre of rituals and
responsible for revolutions. We make money from it, hide behind it,
prohibit and promote it. It relaxes us, revolts us, hurts us and helps
us. But whatever we think about it, however we do it, it defines us."

Beloved Godine poet Mark Doty contributes a personal essay, "The Unwriteable: A Married Man's Affair." The video below was made by Granta based on his essay about the affair with a man that ended his marriage to his wife. The film is part of a multimedia push Granta's making, which will include a forthcoming iPhone app.

Doty was also recently interviewed by Jason Boog and Matt Van Hoven on mediabistro.com's blogtalkradio. He comments on how poetry might mix with other media in our digital age: ”I think the idea of offering the perspective of a visual image, a
little music, makes a wonderful invitation into a work of literature—be
it a poem, a memoir, whatever. Why not use every medium we can find to
connect with the audience? I love that the people at Granta are
about to put out a smartphone app around this same issue. You will be
able to access some media related to the Sex issue on your smartphone
very shortly.”

Back
when we were both very young, Godine had the honor of publishing the
first two poetry books of Mark Doty, who has since gone on to
considerable and deserved fame and fortune, winning the National Book
Award for Poetry in 2008, as well as honors from the National Book
Critics Circle, the LA Times Book Prize, a Whiting Award, and (as the
first American in its history) the T.S. Eliot Prize. We just publishedParagon Park, a new collection with the complete texts of Doty's Turtle, Swan andBethleham in Broad Daylightalong with almost two dozen poems that have appeared in small magazines but have never before been collected.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Catie Copley, the inspiration for one of our most beloved children's books series, is a very happy Black lab that lives at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. Catie and the series was recently featured in Advertising Age in a news piece, "Going to the Dogs: Pet-Friendly Hotels Raise the Welcome Sign." For those of you who love to travel with your pets, do take note:

All Fairmont hotels are pet-friendly, but a third have specific services and menus. They range from the Santa Monica Fairmont Hotel's PAW Program, which offers spa services such as "blueberry facials and nail grinding," to the Vancouver Fairmont, which provides a bed, bowl and treat.

"We've seen more and more people that have traveled with pets," said Suzanne Wenz, Fairmont's regional director-public relations. "They're considered, for many people, a part of the family. I think that will increase over time."

As part of its KimptonPets program, the group's hotels accommodate all companion animals (including rabbits, birds and mice) and offer an array of services, including a referral for a pet massage while travelers enjoy their own massage at the hotel spa.

Word-of-mouth and PR appear to be the marketing devices for these services. Neither Fairmont nor Kimpton have dedicated promotional budgets for them, and information is spread through community services and pet-service partnerships.

Though there's still uncertainty about the growth of pet-friendly hotels and the ability of pet travelers to provide meaningful business, Mr. Vetere at APPA said he's hopeful. The improving economy will play the biggest role, he said.

Travelers "want to keep their own active lifestyle while making their pets happy," Mr. Vetere said. "All these services contribute to making that happen." After following these trends, APPA has identified hotels as potential future partners in promoting pet ownership and travel.

What about guests who leave their dog at home or are otherwise "pet-deprived"? Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel offers the Canine Adventure package, built around Catie Copley, the resident black Labrador who plays a role similar to that of Eloise at The Plaza in New York. It includes a stuffed Catie Copley Dog and a copy of children's book Catie Copley's Great Escape.

"A lot of people take Catie for a walk, maybe five walks a day, whether or not they're on the package," said Ms. Wenz.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Hygeiolatryn Fanaticism about health. More useful, these days, would be a word for fanaticism about fitness—an increasingly prevalent condition, judging by the thousands of goggle-eyed whirling dervishes of our time bounding about in aerobics classes and jogging their way doggedly around what, but for their presence, would be scenic tracks and pathways.

Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Hygeiolatry appears in the Second.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Carolyn Kellogg over at Jacket Copy shared this talk. It's worth a listen:

Book designer Chip Kidd spoke at the main 2012 TED conference; his speech was posted online Wednesday. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have devoted the past 25 years to designing books," he says when he gets to the substance of his talk. Above him a slide reads, "Yes, BOOKS. You know, the bound volumes with ink on paper. You cannot turn them off with a switch. Tell your kids."

He brings that irreverence – and interactivity – to his talk, which highlights what a print book can do.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Black Sparrow author, Eddie Chuculate, will be a panelist for the "Celebrating Fiction" event at the 2012 Indigenous Book Festival hosted by the Institute for American Indian Research at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. The festival will take place on April 12th and 13th and has a rich schedule planned which includes presentations on "Environment and Sustainability Initiatives" and "Cultural Revitalization for the 21st Century", Indigenous Storytelling, creative writing workshops, and poetry-focused events.

Chuculate is a Creek/Cherokee Indian from Muskogee, Oklahoma and we're proud to publish Cheyenne Madonna, his debut collection of gritty, deceptively simple stories that recall Junot Diaz and Jim Harrison. From Jennifer Levin at The Santa Fe New Mexican: "Chuculate presents a profound disconnect between the mythology of Indian art and the present-day reality of Indian artists, who rarely get to be artists without the cultural qualifier. He also lays bare the effects of wide-spread multi-generational addiction without making excuses for the way his characters treat each other. There are no saints in here, and no demons, either. Cheyenne Madonna is a fantastic debut."

For more information on the festival and the full program please click here.